Wiki Projects in the classroom... VERY COOL! A great way to allow students to work cooperatively together and be hands on with the material/information they are to learn.
So now you are asking: What is a wiki?
Answer: wi·ki ˈwikē/ noun
There are a few sites that teachers can use to set up wiki projects for their classes. One free site is wikispaces.com which is designed for educators and students. Teachers can set up a virtual classroom: posting announcements, assignments, blogs, upcoming activites or events, and projects. On wikispaces.com, they can create projects on-line that students can work on in Teams or Groups. Students are assigned log-ins and students can go into their team project page and edit their group's work. They can also leave comments for each other directly on the team's page. Teachers can easily track how much or how little work each member of the team did to the group project so all members have to contribute, solving the age old problem of all the group's work falling onto one person. Teachers can also set privacy parameters for the site to determine if it can be viewed by anyone or by invitation only.
Similarly, the website pbworks.com offers free accounts for educators. An AMAZING class project using pbworks.com was done by Mrs. Gaitan's freshman health class last year. Mrs. Gaitan had her students create a Virtual Health Fair, assigning them to groups to create a wiki presenting information to a specific audience: elementary students, teens, parents of teens, parents of elementary students, and health teachers. The students did a fantastic job on this project, working directly with the information in a way which not only engaged them but also asked them to engage their specific audience. They included clip art, video and audio links, charts, tables, and quizzes. They also included a conclusion and resource or works cited page. It contained all the characteristics of a traditional paper but was presented in a fun, interactive way with the use of technology! Visit one of these outstanding Virtual Health Fair wiki's at: www.virtualhealth9.pbworks.com. This group was assigned elementary students as their audience. They were given topics of information they were to include on the site but had to determine what was appropriate for their audience. You can see their comments to each other listed below the main page, showing you some of the processes the students used while creating this wiki. Students were graded on a rubric, not only on the content and organization of their site, but also using peer and self assessments. Mrs. Gaitan plans to take the Virtual Health Fair one step further this year by having groups present their wiki project to their intended audience, specifically presenting the elementary students virtual health fair to the elementary students in our district.
Try a wiki project in your class today and see how it works!
So now you are asking: What is a wiki?
Answer: wi·ki ˈwikē/ noun
- a website that allows collaborative editing of its content and structure by its users
There are a few sites that teachers can use to set up wiki projects for their classes. One free site is wikispaces.com which is designed for educators and students. Teachers can set up a virtual classroom: posting announcements, assignments, blogs, upcoming activites or events, and projects. On wikispaces.com, they can create projects on-line that students can work on in Teams or Groups. Students are assigned log-ins and students can go into their team project page and edit their group's work. They can also leave comments for each other directly on the team's page. Teachers can easily track how much or how little work each member of the team did to the group project so all members have to contribute, solving the age old problem of all the group's work falling onto one person. Teachers can also set privacy parameters for the site to determine if it can be viewed by anyone or by invitation only.
Similarly, the website pbworks.com offers free accounts for educators. An AMAZING class project using pbworks.com was done by Mrs. Gaitan's freshman health class last year. Mrs. Gaitan had her students create a Virtual Health Fair, assigning them to groups to create a wiki presenting information to a specific audience: elementary students, teens, parents of teens, parents of elementary students, and health teachers. The students did a fantastic job on this project, working directly with the information in a way which not only engaged them but also asked them to engage their specific audience. They included clip art, video and audio links, charts, tables, and quizzes. They also included a conclusion and resource or works cited page. It contained all the characteristics of a traditional paper but was presented in a fun, interactive way with the use of technology! Visit one of these outstanding Virtual Health Fair wiki's at: www.virtualhealth9.pbworks.com. This group was assigned elementary students as their audience. They were given topics of information they were to include on the site but had to determine what was appropriate for their audience. You can see their comments to each other listed below the main page, showing you some of the processes the students used while creating this wiki. Students were graded on a rubric, not only on the content and organization of their site, but also using peer and self assessments. Mrs. Gaitan plans to take the Virtual Health Fair one step further this year by having groups present their wiki project to their intended audience, specifically presenting the elementary students virtual health fair to the elementary students in our district.
Try a wiki project in your class today and see how it works!